The city archive of Cologne, Germany collapsed yesterday, in part destroying a very valuable repository of historical documents. The total extent of the damage will not be known for some time.
The AP’s story is here.
Tip: Cronaca.
All posts by Lars Walker
On stopping swords, with swords
This will have to be a short post. My new publisher is finally calling on me for input in getting my book put together, so I can’t give my topic the word count it deserves.
But here’s tonight’s Provocative Thesis™:
All liberals are Christians.
Even if they’re atheists. Even if they’re Jewish or Buddhist or New Age or “Spiritual, Not Religious.”
They’re Christian heretics, but they’re Christian heretics. Continue reading On stopping swords, with swords
Sigrid Undset on Russia
Today at The Brussels Journal, Thomas F. Bertonneau gives a synopsis of a fascinating report written by author Sigrid Undset (one of my favorites) following her escape from occupied Norway through Russia and Japan during World War II.
At least one western intellectual wasn’t duped by Stalin.
HUUUUGE NEWS!!!!!!!
At least, it’s huge news if you’re a Viking buff. Or a Viking buff particularly interested in western Norway, anyway. Karmøy island, specifically.
OK, it’s huge news if you’re me.
You’ve certainly seen pictures of the Oseberg Viking ship. It looks like this.
The Oseberg ship, along with the Gokstad ship, were both discovered in remarkable states of preservation in grave mounds in the eastern part of Norway in the 1880s. They were painstakingly reconstructed, and are now viewed by thousands of visitors annually in the Viking Ships Museum in Oslo. Two women had been buried in the Oseberg ship; a man in the Gokstad.
But nobody knew the Oseberg ship’s secret history. Now it appears that history is coming to light. Continue reading HUUUUGE NEWS!!!!!!!
The church Mark Twain built?
One of the oddest stories of the day comes from Nevada. The Reno City Supervisors, apparently, want to spend money to preserve its First Presbyterian Church. Their reason for this is that Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) helped to raise money to build it, during his 3-year sojourn in the state. (Apparently he participated as a favor to his brother, who was a member.) “Americans United for Separation of Church and State” objects.
Considering Mark Twain’s well-known views on religion, the whole story is kind of surreal. Like preserving a historically black church in memory of George Wallace or something.
Going out and playing with God
One of the recurring irritations of my life has been one of my brothers. This brother, from an early age, made it his constant purpose to try to get me to go outside and do stuff.
My idea of a good time is to stay in the house with a book. A house to be inside of, a good book, and chocolate are about all I need for perfect contentedness.
This was, naturally, highly frustrating for my brother, who loved the outdoors and wanted somebody to play with, but was stuck with me for a sibling. As a playmate I left much to be desired. Experience had taught me that if I yielded to his importunities, the result would be 1) some game in which he’d beat me, and then, 2) a fight in which he would beat me again. This was a programme whose charm wore off at a pretty early stage.
For my brother, of course, as a normal human being, going outside and playing was a good thing in itself. My refusal to help him out with that was a major frustration in his young life. Continue reading Going out and playing with God
Heads and tails
All these years I thought I was going gray. Turns out I’m a peroxide blonde.
Which just goes to show that one of my Viking friends was right when he said, “I’m not getting grayer. I’m getting blonder.”
And here’s a story about a woman in New Zealand, an amputee, who got the Weta special effects people (the folks behind all the neat stuff in “The Lord of the Rings”) to make her a prosthetic mermaid’s tail.
Part of me thinks that’s a little creepy. But most of me thinks it’s pretty neat.
What bothers me is that the tail the technician is shown sculpting in the pictures doesn’t appear to be the same tail the woman is wearing in the photos. Perhaps there were alpha and beta versions. Or perhaps they’re making them available to the general market.
Tips on both stories: Fox News.
Ash Wednesday thoughts
Over at Patrick O’Hannigan’s The Paragraph Farmer, he quotes Peter Kreeft’s response to the question: “But is not God a lover rather than a warrior?”
A: No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is — what the love that God is, is. Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.
Read the whole thing. It’s not long.
In a somewhat related vein, I had reason to consult one of Sigrid Undset’s novels today (The Axe, the first novel of her less-famous tetralogy, The Master of Hestviken, which the author preferred to the more famous Kristin Lavransdatter, and I think I agree). Here’s a speech from one character:
“It is an easy matter, Olav, to be a good Christian so long as God asks no more of you than to hear sweet singing in church, and to yield Him obedience while He caresses you with the hand of a father. But a man’s faith is put to the test on the day God’s will is not his. But now I will tell you what Bishop Torfinn said to me one day—it was of you and your suit we were speaking. ‘God grant,’ he said, ‘that he may learn to understand in time that whoso is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.’”
Olav looked earnestly before him. Then he nodded. “Aye. That is true. I know it.”
The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke
James Lee Burke is a superior mystery writer. He writes in the tradition of high craftsmanship and sensitivity that characterizes the best Southern literature. I found The Tin Roof Blowdown brilliant and moving.
And I probably won’t read any more by him.
But first, a synopsis.
The setting for The Tin Roof Blowdown is New Orleans and its environs, during and immediately following Hurricane Katrina. The conflict is set off by a group of young black men who steal a motorboat (thus dooming a number of trapped people to drowning), break into a rich man’s house, and discover a treasure trove of drugs, cash and diamonds. That same night one of them is killed and another paralyzed by a bullet fired by someone in the neighborhood. Suspicion falls on a neighbor, whose daughter (by a strange coincidence) was recently gang-raped by some of these same young men.
Although investigation of his death is technically a federal matter (under 1960s laws dealing with deprivation of civil rights by murder), the bulk of the investigation is elbowed off (due to heavy case loads) to Dave Robicheaux, a sheriff’s deputy in New Iberia Parish and hero of a number of mysteries by Burke. He is unofficially assisted in his investigation by his friend Clete Purcel, a former cop and present skip tracer. Continue reading The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke
The real Oscars. Accept no substitutes.
My weekend was remarkable only for its nondescript character, and I had no idea what I was going to blog about today.
Then, while on the Nordic Track tonight (I have Nordic tracks all over my house, left behind by the slushy shoes of Nordic people) I came up with a silly gag that I thought would do.
I would start out in Clueless Voice™, saying how everybody’s talking about something called the Oscar awards today, but I don’t see anything about anybody named Oscar in any of the lists.
Then I’d list some awards for people actually named Oscar, like Oscar Wilde, Oscar Levant, and Oscar Mayer.
Must have been a good gag, too, because Wankette over at Threedonia beat me to it.
However, her list is far from comprehensive.
Below the fold, the true winners of some of the less-known Oscars. Continue reading The real Oscars. Accept no substitutes.